Family
by Avalon Fletcher
Summary: Brief glimpses of aspects of life after Bones becomes Parker's legal guardian, focusing on details and specific situations instead of a linear plot. Rated T to be safe, due to violence alluded to in Ch. 1.
1. Chapter 1

A couple of notes: This concept has been tackled before, but the idea of Brennan taking over custody of Parker has intrigued me for awhile. This story is AU as of The Foot in the Foreclosure, when we learn more about Booth's family life. This story is made up of glimpses of how Brennan tackles different aspects of raising Parker, so it is not always properly sequential in nature. The first chapter is the most "normal" chapter, because it is necessary to set-up the rest.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Bones, Booth, or even the adorable Parker.

~*~

"It's family, Bones, nothing trumps family. Just remember that."- Special Agent Seeley Booth

~*~

Phone Calls

She's hasn't felt warm since she received the call, nearly a week ago, now. She was listed as his emergency contact, so they called her shortly after rushing him to the hospital. She still doesn't remember leaving the lab or driving the hospital, but she must have because she had her keys, and when she left the hospital she managed to find her car in the lot without too much trouble. She does remember entering the emergency room, though, because she recalls the frustration she felt with the personnel who couldn't—or wouldn't, she still thinks darkly—answer her questions. She finally pinned down a doctor and managed to wrestle an update from him: multiple gun-shot wounds, emergency surgery, critical condition, "Doing all we can." The rest of the story comes from the FBI agent who answers Booth's phone when she calls it, looking for answers.

They had just wrapped up a case, not their normal homicide investigation, but a review of evidence for the appeal of a man sentenced to life for the murder of his neighbor's twin little girls. The forensic evidence and additional bone markings her intern discovered did not support the prosecution's case. The man had been wrongfully convicted, and thanks to the work of her team (and Booth's suspicion of the handling of the investigation) he was freed to return to his family. After their traditional post-case pie, Booth had headed over to Rebecca's to pick up Parker for the weekend.

The rest had been pieced together by the investigators, but it seemed that father of the girls who had been killed followed Booth. He was in Parker's room helping him pack when the man kicked in the front door carrying a .38. It was sheer luck that Booth hadn't been in the kitchen with Rebecca when he arrived, or there was no doubt that all three would have been killed. As it was, Booth had instinctively hidden Parker in the closet before responding to the sound of the shot which had caught Rebecca in the chest, hitting an artery and killing her almost instantly. It was no doubt the sight of her blood which distracted Booth for just that fraction of a second, because although the round he fired hit the intruder in the gut, it was no kill shot. The intruder emptied his gun into Booth, before stumbling from the house and throwing himself into his car. If he'd searched the house or if Parker hadn't listened to his father and had investigating the gunfire, there was no way of knowing if Parker would have survived. As it was, Parker did listen, not leaving the closet until the officers who responded to a neighbor's frantic 9-1-1 call searched the house and found him.

The shooter was found a couple blocks from the house, bleeding out in his Cadillac. He was simultaneously arrested and rushed to the hospital, and if the EMT driving (whose brother is a cop), hadn't driven quite as fast as he could have…well, no one said a thing.

She was listed as his emergency contact, his power of attorney, so she's the one that signs form after form for surgeries meant to keep him alive. She doesn't leave the hospital for over two days, but Angela brings her fresh clothes and the whole team sits shifts with her, forcing her to eat or nap while they wait for news. It takes almost forty-eight hours for there to be real news about Booth, and when she hears it, she almost wishes she was still ignorant. There will be a new type of waiting now, because Booth is in a coma, and because of the damage his brain sustained, they don't know when or if he'll wake up. She tackles the information and paperwork with a calm born of forced distance. She handles it as a doctor, a scientist, calculating odds and making decisions. It isn't until she's determined that he isn't going to wake up soon, at any rate, that Angela is able to convince her to go back to her apartment. It isn't until the water of the hot shower hits her that she stops being a scientist and starts being someone whose best friend might never joke with her again. She isn't able to stop the sobs for hours.

It's a phone call that turned her numb, so it's a phone call that snaps her out of it. It's early evening, and she knows she should be eating dinner, but she hasn't had an appetite, so she's instead sipping a coffee that's long since gone cold. Her phone rings, and when she checks the caller id her stomach lurches, because it's a call from Booth's apartment. It isn't until she hears the quiet, nervous "Doctor Bones?" that she remembers Parker is staying at Booth's with his paternal grandparents, since Rebecca's boyfriend, Drew, foisted him off on them in a panic after the incident.

Her confusion swiftly turns to action, however, when Parker starts to explain that his father made him memorize her number in case Booth or Rebecca couldn't be reached, and that his Grampa isn't acting right, he's scared, but Gramma says that Gramps didn't mean to hurt his arm. She's halfway out the door before he can finish, reassuring him that she'll take care of everything.

When she reaches Booth's apartment, she doesn't bother to knock, instead using the spare key he gave her eons ago. The grandmother is in the kitchen, looking so frightened at her abrupt arrival, but she's too driven to care. She heads straight into Parker's room, where she finds him sitting in the corner, holding his arm. She doesn't hesitate before telling him that she's taking him away, and begins gathering some of his things. The Grandfather stumbles into the room at this point, and she can smell the cheap whiskey on him from halfway across the room. He demands that she leave, but she cuts him off saying that she'll be gone in minutes, but Parker is coming with her. He takes a swing at her, but she's faster and he's drunk so she takes him out with one rage-driven punch. When she turns back to Parker, she finds that he's finished packing, and is clutching his backpack to him with fearful eyes. She reaches out for his hand, and leads him out of the apartment, leaving the Grandmother screaming about the police.

She drives a couple blocks before pulling over and examining Parker's arm. It's not broken, sprained at worst, but she plans on taking him to the hospital, just in case. She's halfway there before she realizes that by this point there's probably an Amber Alert out about the two of them. She has Caroline meet them at the hospital, and the next few hours are full of x-rays and legal action.

She doesn't know what would have happened if she hadn't been so well-known or Booth so well-respected by law-enforcement. As it is, she's almost forced to return Parker or face arrest. Instead, luck intervenes in the form of Jared Booth. He was unreachable in India, but they'd left him a message explaining Seeley's condition. He calls her for details just before she's supposed to meet with the judge. Through the magic of modern technology, Jared manages to video conference with the judge and he explains that a puppy shouldn't be left in the care of his father, let alone a child. Rebecca has no living immediate family and Jared is on the other side of the world, so the judge appoints her Parker's temporary guardian, pending Booth's condition. As she leaves the judge's quarters, she finds herself wanting to call Russ and thank him for asking her to be certified as a foster mother. It isn't until she and Parker are back in her car that the anxieties about the situation start to hit.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! They spurred me to finish and post this before working on finals (oops).

Residences, Part I

Parker sleeps on her couch for a week before she decides something must be done about their living arrangements. Her apartment doesn't have a spare bedroom, and is far from kid-friendly. She won't subject Parker to returning to his mom's house and the scene of the crime; besides it's too far from work, and from Booth. She briefly considers moving into Booth's apartment, but while the flat itself is suitable for a six-year-old, the neighborhood isn't. Finally, she caves and finds a realtor. Together, they find a house (with a yard and a pool to Parker's glee) which is in an excellent neighborhood for kids and is close enough to work for her to feel practical, and close enough to Booth for her to feel comforted. If the rent is a little pricy, well that's what the "bullet" from her New York Time's Best Seller is meant to pay for. She arranges for Angela and Hodgins to watch Parker for the day, an arrangement they have no objections to. If she was the type of woman who noticed such things, it might have made her raise a brow, but she wasn't, so she didn't.

She's tracked down the company the FBI uses when needing to pack and store large amounts of materials from crime scenes. For such a task, she'd only trust the best. She's happy to note they're careful, quick, and efficient, just like their advertisement says. They start at Rebecca's house, where Parker's things (and many family photos and the like) are boxed and moved to the new house, while the rest is packaged and placed in a storage facility. She has decided that leaving anything in the house would entice thieves, and she worries about Parker one day wanting his mother's possessions. At Booth's apartment, only Parker's belongings are gathered, although other securities (like removing the plants and emptying the fridge and freezer) are made.

The next day, she and Parker work together to box-up her apartment, a task which challenges her ability to allow him to feel useful while not risking disaster. Many of the artistic or historical items will end up in boxes in the basement of the new house, waiting for Parker to reach a more appropriate age. It's not until two days later, when she's returning her keys to her former landlord that her stomach clenches and she grows short of breath. The permanence of such a move hits her with a wave of grief, and she has to hold the wall to stay upright. Then she composes herself, joins Parker in the car, and drives to her new home.

Therapeutic

Even after all of her sessions with Sweets, she still hates therapy. It triggers memories of sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair answering a disinterested woman with too much make-up who asked question after question about how she was "adapting" and "fitting in," and then rattled off some theory about "abandonment issues." Regardless of her personal feelings towards shrinks, however, she understands that Parker has been through a serious trauma, and needs to let his feelings out. She won't consent to rigid, scheduled therapy sessions, but she makes a point of asking Sweets to watch Parker while she runs errands at least once a week. She's not exactly the queen of subtly, so when she explains that Parker might want to talk to someone other than her for a time, Sweets is easily able to understand her proposal. So Parker and Sweets play video games and talk about cars and superheroes on good days, or sometimes more serious subjects. Over time, as Parker puts the horror behind him, the visits include less talking and more video games, until one day she gets home and bemusedly ponders which of the shaggy haired boys playing Xbox was supposed to be the responsible adult. She doesn't mind though, in fact, if she is being honest, she's a little relieved. She may be able to feed, clothe, protect, and teach Parker, but she doesn't have Booth's (or Sweet's) knack for just being able to _play_. The rest is instinctual or logical, but this takes work. It comes in time.

Nightmares

The first night in their new home, she wakes up to sounds from Parker's bedroom. He's having a nightmare, so she rouses him and attempts to calm him down. This pattern persists every night that week and it makes her worry that he had trouble sleeping in her apartment, too, but she had been too tired or far away to notice. She decides that, logically, his nightmares stem from the death of his mother, the aftermath of the attack, and being taken to live in a new home with a (relative) stranger. Understanding the logic behind his panic doesn't calm her at all, however, because she doesn't know how to soothe and comfort him. She takes to sleeping in an armchair next to his bed so she can wake him as soon as possible from his bad dreams, but she notes that when he opens his eyes and looks around, the sight of her sitting nearby doesn't comfort him, she's not his parents. Biologically speaking, a creature's mother becomes associated with impressions of safety. Unscientifically, she still remembers when she believed that the very presence of her own mother banished the creatures she was certain lived in her wardrobe. She wishes she could give Parker the same sense of comfort. Now Booth in Parker's eyes is some type of superhero, who uses the powers of the FBI to catch bad guys and put them in prison. She, herself, feels safer in his presence; it's no surprise that Parker would see his father as the epitome of security. But she is neither Rebecca nor Booth, and she still needs to find some way to reassure this terrified boy.

If she had asked for help, she would have received many different ideas. Angela would have suggested surrounding Parker's bed with photos of his parents, and reminding him every night that his mother was looking over him. Sweets would have offered to talk Parker through his fears during their conversations. Max would have told an anecdote about her own bad dreams as a kid, and how she would only sleep through the night when serenaded by classical music. Russ would have explained that when the girls had bad spells, he placed night-lights into their room, which always seemed to help.

But she doesn't ask for advice, and she is sometimes strangely literal, so she decides to prove to Parker that he is safe with her. She takes him to one of her martial arts classes, and lets him watch as she pummels both training equipment and friendly opponents. Parker's eyes grow wider and by the time they leave, she can she that she's become substantially more impressive in his eyes. Inspired, she signs him up for a beginning kids' class, feeling that, just like it had for her, having the ability to defend himself would help him grow more confident.

Whether it's knowing that she's able to take on his monsters or because he's learning how to himself or maybe just because he's adjusting, Parker's nightmares grow more and more infrequent and he falls back to sleep faster. Eventually, she's able to spend her nights in her own room, although she wakes up nightly and needs to check on Parker before she can fall back asleep.


End file.
